


To Have And To Hold

by orphan_account



Series: this is the end [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brief Mentions of Recreational Drug Use, Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It surprised everyone to learn that there’d been love there, once. There had been something other than pain and heartbreak. Something other than drugs and carnal pleasures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Have And To Hold

**Author's Note:**

> I... don't know what prompted this.

They were married.

It wasn’t a secret – there was no room for secrets at Camp Chitaqua – but it wasn’t common knowledge. The living quarters in the camp were too close, and you became too familiar with the others to have real secrets. There wasn’t enough room for lies at the end of the world.

It was no secret that they shared a cabin and knew each other… biblically. But it surprised everyone to learn that there’d been love there, once. There had been something other than pain and heartbreak. Something other than drugs and carnal pleasures.

Because there were good days, even at the end of all things, when one or the other would refer to their counterpart as ‘husband’ in front of others. And there were bad days, more often than not, when the word would be said with anger and frustration, the pain of the bleeding heart seeping out in the vowels and consonants.

When people learnt their sole secret, their truth, they could see. The love that was once between them so devastatingly clear that it almost broke the hearts of onlookers, and those who felt the ache wondered how they could survive it. Day in and day out, the same old pain. (Dean let it settle in the back of his mind, letting it keep his other aches company. Cas forgot).

There were no rings, but there were documents stashed under the floorboards, and there used to be love and that was enough. Outsiders could see the depth of pain in the two men and imagine it replaced by love and light, and they could imagine how much those documents must’ve meant at one time, nearly a lifetime before.

People tried to reason with them, get them to see that there had been love and there could be again. But they never got a response from either man – just a blank expression, glassy eyed from drugs or blank and steeled against memories.

And life went on. They spun their circles around each other, pulling at each other like the moon and the sea, one guiding the other. Neither sure who was which. But they knew, and so did everyone else. At one time, the tide was smooth and the moon pulled gently, but now they fought and storms raged on the faultless shore and all the while everyone knew – there had been tenderness there, once.

But the world ended, and that’s no place for love. No place for anything good to thrive. And the drugs had come in, and the alcohol, and the doubt – neither had ever been good with words. They kept on as they always had, but the love died. It became infected with their poisons but they never let it go, keeping it close to their hearts until they were infected, too. And then there was really no going back. There was no chance for survival, and they both knew it. All they had left to do was cling on a little tighter, hold a little longer, and never say goodbye, even though it was killing them both not to.

There’d been love, once, a long time ago, at the largest cabin in the camp. There’d been more love than anyone ever realized. Enough to end the world, enough to end themselves. 


End file.
